FDC3 for Web Browsers Discussion group - 16th March 2023

[kriswest]

Group overview

Group convened to discuss how to enable FDC3 use in a web browser, without the use of a browser extension (such as fdc3-desktop-agent or a container).

Issue: #896
Mailing list discussion: https://groups.google.com/a/finos.org/g/fdc3/c/jCvlLjokBLs

In a recent email on the FDC3 mailing list, @kriswest wrote:

... I also want to add that there is clearly significant interest in the community in enabling FDC3 use on the web. There is a strong use case in that it would enable better onboarding journeys with less drop-off (where you use an app on the web with others before adopting a desktop container or similar).

and:

But there are also additional challenges such as how to make the API available reliably without importing a proprietary module from a particular vendor into every app, how to deal with more than one implementation of API/Desktop Agent in the browser at once, how to do this reliably and securely within the browser sandbox etc.. Work needs to be done in the Standard to solve these issues and to make web browser use possible in a future FDC3 Standard version - which I believe is possible (and likely to involve using a vendor-agnostic FDC3 NPM module to detect and connect to API implementation(s)). However, we're going to need to do that work to enable the aforementioned API implementations to be compliant and if we fail to hold the line now on compliance with the current version of the FDC3 Standard, that may never happen.

Relevant issue tags

Current open issues that relate to the above concepts with the label:

Meeting Date

Thursday 16 Mar 2023 - 11am EDT / 3pm GMT (note daylight saving time in the US, but not UK)

WebEx info

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• Meeting number: 2552 173 3304

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Agenda

• Convene & roll call, review meeting notices (5mins)
• Proposals for a library (standard) to provide access to a Desktop Agent API interface (50 mins)
  • Proposals posted on FDC3 For Web browsers #896
    • Detailed proposal with options: FDC3 For Web browsers #896 (comment)
• AOB & Adjourn (5mins)

Minutes

• @kriswest provided an overview of the proposal posted at: FDC3 For Web browsers #896 (comment)
  • The proposal is structure as a:
    • A set of defined use cases and terminology for them
    • A 'meta-proposal' defining a possible shape for and packaging of a solution
    • Technology options for the implementation of the steps defined in the meta-proposal - to be discussed and final options selected in order to create a final proposal.
  • Goal: Develop a library standard to provide access to a desktop agent that:
    • preserves existing FDC3 apps from breaking changes
    • allows desktop agent providers to innovate in their format and implementation.
    • handles the defined use cases
  • We could consider different terminology for desktop agents, such as “web agents” or “FDC3 agents” - however, this may cause breaking changes in code bases...
  • There are a series of different use-cases (5) for using FDC3 in apps built with web-technologies, where the standard is currently overly focus on one (containers/browser extension that can inject the implementation. These will need to have their terminology defined in the FDC3 glossary and various parts of the documentation to use the defined terms appropriately.
    • In particular we must disambiguate 'Micro-Frontend Container', suggested that 'Web container' is used for cases where the apps are spawned by a parent that indicates which implementation to use, while 'Micro-Frontend Container' is used for cases where multiple apps existing the same DOM.
• Avoiding breaking changes for existing applications was discussed: removing the global entirely would make for a very difficult migration with almost all existing FDC3-enabled apps becoming incompatible with the new version until updated. A situation like that should be avoided, enabling a much smoother migration to the new approach via adopting the installer. This is specifically consider in the steps appearing in the proposal.
• Proprietary implementations of the installer were briefly discussed - specifically requiring them to conform to the steps proposed, ensuring that the use of proprietary libraries does not limit apps to working solely with that library. No decision was made on whether this should be encouraged, allowed or disallowed.
• The proposal was reviewed up to the beginning of step 2.
  • No decisions on technology options have yet been made.
• @robmoffat & @kriswest thanked the community for contribution on this topic (through past meetings, on the issue and through the fdc3-installer repo shared), many of which were integrated into the proposal.
  • special mention for @novavi, @thorsent and @robmoffat for their contributions.

Action Items

• ALL review technology options proposed and feedback, and suggest additional options that should be discussed.
• Next meeting to continue to discuss technology options and seek to start selecting ones to implement the proposal steps.

Untracked attendees

Full name	Affiliation	GitHub username

[tpina]

Tiago Pina / Finsemble

[hampshan]

Andrew Hampshire @ UBS

[thorsent]

Terry Thorsen / Finsemble

[kriswest]

Kris West / Finsemble 🚀

[mistryvinay]

Vinay Mistry / Symphony 🎵

[timjenkel]

Tim / Wellington

[Julia-Ritter]

Julia / FINOS

[ggeorgievx]

Georgi / Tick42

[robmoffat]

Rob / FINOS

[WatsonCIQ]

Chris Watson / Finsemble 👋

[hughtroeger]

Hugh Troeger / FactSet